{"id":160464,"date":"2025-11-03T13:21:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/160464\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T13:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:21:10","slug":"ff-confirms-ivan-yates-provided-interview-and-debate-training-for-jim-gavin-campaign-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/160464\/","title":{"rendered":"FF confirms Ivan Yates provided interview and debate training for Jim Gavin campaign \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> has confirmed it hired Ivan Yates during the presidential campaign <\/a>to provide four hours of \u201cinterview and debate training\u201d but said he was not involved in its campaign team.<\/p>\n

Minister for Housing James Browne has confirmed he also received media training from Yates, but that the commentator was not involved in advising on \u201cpolicy matters.\u201d <\/p>\n

Controversy has surrounded Mr Yates, a former Fine Gael minister, since it emerged he provided coaching to Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s doomed presidential candidate Jim Gavin. It has now sparked an internal Government row.<\/p>\n

Mr Gavin withdrew from the campaign more than a week before the vote on October 24th due to controversy about his failure to repay a former tenant more than \u20ac3,000 in overpaid rent. <\/p>\n

Mr Yates is a former bookmaker and broadcaster who was a co-host of the Path To Power political podcast with Today FM\u2019s Matt Cooper. <\/p>\n

In a statement on Monday morning, Fianna F\u00e1il said Mr Yates had not worked with the party beyond September 29th. <\/p>\n

It said the commentator was hired for two specific debate programmes. It said the focus of the training was \u201cthe practicalities of in-studio interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike all political parties, Fianna F\u00e1il has for many years used the services of media skills consultants. The party currently works with a number of providers, all on an ad hoc basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn relation to the recent presidential campaign, the party retained the services of Ivan Yates to provide interview and debate training. The focus of the training was on the practicalities of in-studio interviews and was centred on preparations for two specific programmes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIvan provided two sessions in the early stage of the campaign, between the period 23rd September to 29th September. There was no further training or intervention provided after 29th September. Ivan\u2019s training totalled approximately four hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did not provide any campaign advice, nor was he involved in the campaign team.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the news emerged, Mr Yates<\/a>\u2019s role as a co-presenter of the Path to Power podcast with Cooper <\/a>was ended.<\/p>\n

Mr Browne, a Fianna F\u00e1il TD, was coached by Mr Yates this year, since becoming a minister in January. <\/p>\n

\u201cMinister Browne has received media-interview preparation from Ivan since he became Minister,\u201d a spokeswoman told The Irish Times. <\/p>\n

\u201cMr Yates has not advised or engaged with the Minister on any policy matters or in any other capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Yates work with Mr Browne was not declared to listeners of the Path to Power podcast, including when the Minister for Housing was discussed on the podcast. <\/p>\n

An episode on May 2nd of this year focused on the fallout of the controversy over plans to appoint National Asset Management Agency (Nama) chief executive Brendan McDonagh to the role of the Government\u2019s new Housing Activation Office. <\/p>\n

Mr Yates had described the dispute between Fine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il over the appointment as \u201calmost Fubar territory,\u201d Mr Yates said, meaning \u201cf***** up beyond all recognition.\u201d <\/p>\n

Of Mr Browne, Mr Yates said \u201ccoming into this situation, it\u2019ll take him at least a year to get it all in his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it looks like he\u2019s going to be in the exact same situation as Eoghan Murphy, that he is going to be collateral damage in all this.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr Yates also said in the same episode that Fine Gael was opposed to removing rent caps in order to stimulate investment in the market, which was a \u201cvery populist and also opposition view.\u201d <\/p>\n

Both Mr Yates and the Path to Power podcast have been approached for comment. <\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s subscription edition of the Path to Power podcast was not published as usual on a Sunday. In a message to subscribers, host Matt Cooper apologised to listeners for the lack of the scheduled episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, as you may or may not be aware, I\u2019ve had a disagreement with Ivan over his undisclosed involvement with the Jim Gavin presidential campaign. This means that I\u2019ve decided that we should end our podcast partnership somewhat earlier that we had anticipated,\u201d Mr Cooper said. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we had a podcast recorded for uploading today, I don\u2019t believe it is appropriate for us to bring it to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Cooper said he had known that Mr Yates \u201chas engaged in training for political figures,\u201d but the Last Word presenter and Business Post columnist said that he did not know until last weekend that he had helped Jim Gavin prepare for debates during the presidential campaign. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat involvement would not have stopped me from talking to Ivan about the engagement, I would have asked him about Jim Gavin\u2019s performances, but while reminding our audience that Ivan had played a role in preparing him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Cooper said he believed that \u201ctransparency\u201d is important, notwithstanding Mr Yates\u2019 commitment to client confidentiality. <\/p>\n

Mr Yates sparked a campaign-trail controversy when he suggested that were he working with Fine Gael, he would \u201csmear the bejaysus\u201d out of Independent candidate Catherine Connolly.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael TD and Minister of State for Migration Colm Brophy <\/a>on Sunday told RT\u00c9 Radio that Fianna F\u00e1il had \u201cquestions to answer\u201d on the matter.<\/p>\n

He said Fianna F\u00e1il could not \u201cjust dismiss\u201d questions about the media training work Mr Yates did with Mr Gavin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Fine Gael spokesman said it has not used Mr Yates for media training or similar work.<\/p>\n

A Newstalk spokeswoman said: \u201cIvan Yates operated as a cover presenter on Newstalk for three days during the presidential campaign on September 23rd, 24th and 25th from 9am-12pm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIvan Yates did not inform Newstalk of any conflict of interest relating to the presidential election campaign … This matter is currently under review by Newstalk management.\u201d<\/p>\n

RT\u00c9 said Mr Yates was interviewed three times about the election but not during the election period as defined by media regulator Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n.<\/p>\n

It has asked him why he did not disclose his involvement with one campaign, and said that had it been informed, it would have advised him that it would have to be disclosed to the audience. It said it is satisfied there was no breach of election guidelines by RT\u00c9.<\/p>\n

Mr Yates did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Coimisi\u00fan na Me\u00e1n has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fianna F\u00e1il has confirmed it hired Ivan Yates during the presidential campaign to provide four hours of \u201cinterview…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,4771,553,6,19,17,37856,19487,11,12,15,16,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-160464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fianna-fail","15":"tag-fine-gael","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-ivan-yates","20":"tag-jim-gavin","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-presidential-election","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115485978360901171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}